This invention relates to electrical connector assemblies and more particularly to such assemblies adapted to facilitate the connection of multiconductor cables to corresponding connector contact terminals.
The communications and electronics fields have in recent years seen many technical advances resulting in reduced cost and power requirements, greater facility for miniaturization, simplified installation and maintenance, and other advantages. Integrated circuits, printed wiring boards, including multilayer boards and the like, for example, have contributed extensively to system simplification and savings in the time required for installation, testing, maintenance, and to overall reliability. The interconnection between system components and mounting frames, on the other hand, still relies largely on individual wires assembled in cables for power distribution and signal transmission. In most systems, terminations from the many circuit units are collected on a common backplane and appear as large fields of densely packed pins to which the conductors of interconnecting cables must be joined. Although the art has offered improvements in connectors designed to achieve the electrical connection between such backplane pins and individual cable conductors, the problems of facilitating and speeding the individual joining of the conductors and connector terminals remain. In many connector assemblies, the electrical joining is accomplished by individually soldering each cable conductor to a corresponding contact terminal of the connector. In an alternate method known in the art, electrical connection between the connector terminals and the cable conductors is achieved by slicing through the conductor insulations by means of bifurcated blades extending from the terminals, which blades at the same time seize the bared conductors to make the connections. The latter method has the obvious advantages that, not only is the tedious and time consuming soldering step eliminated, but the necessity of first stripping the conductors is also avoided.
The individual cable conductors are first sorted and arranged on a first insulated member mounting the conductors in a pattern corresponding to the spacings of terminal blades retained in a second insulated housing member. The two members are adapted to be engaged one by the other, during which engagement the blades function as described to make the electrical connections. After this assembly of the members, a unitary connector plug is realized which then may be manually positioned as required to receive backplane or other terminal pins. It will be appreciated that, in order to achieve a reliable connector plug assembly, the circuit completion elements of the insulated subassemblies must be accurately mated to ensure positive electrical connections and, further, once so mated, the subassemblies must be securely locked together to prevent any loosening of the connections as the result of manual movement of the connector plug, vibration, or temperature changes, for example. At the same time, the assembly must provide for the ready separation of the insulated members in order to permit wiring changes and the repair of electrical connections, should this eventually prove necessary.
It is accordingly one object of this invention to provide a new and novel electrical connector construction which may be speedily assembled and yet ensures a reliable and vibration resistant unitary structure.
It is also an object of this invention to provide an improved conductor terminating plug which permits a high degree of versatility in making electrical interconnections.
Another object of this invention is the provision of a novel electrical connector construction for locking into electrical contact a plurality of conductors and a corresponding plurality of connector contact terminals.
A further object of this invention is to achieve a novel contact terminal which serves not only to complete an electrical connection, but also cooperates to act as a connector assembly locking element.